The risk that a coronavirus infection would prove fatal has fallen by almost a third since April due to improved care, researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington said on Thursday.
IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray told Reuters that COVID-19 now kills around 0.6 percent of people infected with the virus in the United States, compared to about 0.9 percent early in the pandemic.
He said statistics indicate that physicians, through blood thinners and oxygen assistance, have found new ways to care for patients. Efficient drugs have also been reported, such as dexamethasone, a generic steroid.
Are The Experts Missing Something?
Experts might have overlooked reliably calculating key metrics in the pandemic: the rate of mortality or the number of people infected with the pathogen. The problem is compounded by the fact that many individuals who become infected do not experience symptoms and are never included in the data.
After accounting for age, IHME said it used an infection-fatality rate (IFR) derived from surveys. The risk of dying from COVID-19 is significantly greater for older people than for younger people.
"We know the risk is profoundly age-related. For every one year of age, the risk of death increases by 9%," Murray said.
The Seattle Institute, an important source of COVID-19 predictions, said it also found that in populations with high levels of obesity, the fatality rate for COVID-19 is higher.
The group said it has now moved to an IFR that changes over time - decreasing by about 0.19 percent every day until the beginning of September after the first pandemic wave in March and April.
As a function of obesity prevalence, it often varies across locations, and tends to differ based on population distribution by age.
From more than 300 surveys, IHME said its study of age-standardized fatality rates indicates a 30 percent decline since March/April.
Despite that positive trend, in recent weeks, infections and hospitalizations have spiked across the nation. The group said its modeling indicates 439,000 total U.S. deaths by March 1, and at 2,200 in mid-January, a peak of daily deaths.
Why Do COVID Death Rates Seem To Be Falling?
Similar stories are unfolding around the world. Charlotte Summers, an intensive care physician at Cambridge University, UK, told Nature that data obtained by the National Health Service (NHS) of the country indicates a drop in death rates. At the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, critical-care physician Derek Angus says that his hospital's statistics team even saw declines over time.
The causes are not entirely clear. No miracle medications, no new technology, and no significant developments have been made in prevention methods for a disease that has infected over 50 million people and killed over 1.2 million people worldwide. Changes in the composition of those being handled may have led to perceived survival boosts. And it seems clear at many hospitals that physicians are getting increasingly better at treating COVID-19, particularly as health care facilities are less overwhelmed.
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